Sandra in the 1950's

Being a Little Kid in Texas

I was born July 24, 1953 in Augusta, Georgia. I didn't live there; neither did my parents who were Kirby Lynn Adams and Mary Lou Hathcock. They were temporarily in Aiken, South Carolina. We all went home to Fort Worth to live near my Granny and Papaw (Vester and Mae Hathcock, whose full original names were Allen Sylvester Hathcock and Annie Mae Houghton; he's the one with the fish). We were just a few hours from Rotan, where Mamaw and Papaw (my dad's parents, Lynn and Gladys Adams, originally Lynn Adams of no middle name, pictured below, right, with me and my baby sister, and Gladys Myrtle Yates) lived.

My sister, Irene, was born in 1956 and there were none more of that batch of kids.

My dad made a two-bedroom house out of parts salvaged from a dismantled church. Not fancy parts. Steel window fromes with cranks, frame, shingles. Santa Claus came there several times. I still have Teddy, and I still have Tiny Tears that I got for my birthday when I was five. Granny used to crochet her little dress-and-panty sets. I still have the top from one set and panties from another, on the doll.

I took piano lessons for about a year, from the age of five into six, but I quit because I was missing a good TV show (Wagon Train), as I recall. But I did learn to read music and that never left me.

I went to first grade on the bus the first few months because the brand new elementary with the big bomb shelter wasn't finished until Christmastime or so. Then I was one of the first to go to W.M.Green Elementary. I'd either walk the three or four blocks (on dirt roads, past cows) or Michael Barrens, my boyfriend, would let me ride on the fender of his little bike.

We had mimosa trees in the front yard, and my mom grew castor beans just because they were easy and big and pretty. Being poison, though, they're not grown much anymore just for fun.

My dad made us a merry-go-round and a see-saw with some serious steel mountings with ball bearings, but alas, we moved away. We thought we were leaving for just a few months, for my dad to put up a building and some machinery in Santa Fe.